The 100 Best Places in Morocco

Every guest gets their own riad, not a room, complete with a rooftop plunge pool, a private courtyard, and a butler who will arrange a Bentley to the airport. The hotel was built at the direction of King Mohammed VI to be a living showcase of Moroccan craft, and the tile work, carved cedar ceilings, and mother-of-pearl details make that ambition hard to miss. Staff move through underground tunnels so the serenity stays unbroken. It holds a Forbes Five Star and sits at number 13 on the World's 50 Best Hotels list.

Winston Churchill painted Marrakech from his third-floor suite here, and the hotel has been setting an impossible bar for guests ever since. La Mamounia is a grand Marrakech resort where Moorish arches, Art Deco edges, and twenty acres of orange trees and bougainvillea compete for your attention. Jean-Georges Vongerichten runs two restaurants, Pierre Hermé handles the pastry, and the lantern-lit spa has been on everyone's mood board for years. It holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Hotels.

Thirteen tables, concrete walls, and an open kitchen two hundred meters from the Atlantic: Table III is a fine-dining restaurant where a chef who trained at Per Se and cooked across the US and Germany came home to Casablanca to cook Moroccan. Seafood comes straight from local fishers, most of the produce from the restaurant's own gardens, and French technique meets Japanese restraint on every plate. It landed on MENA's 50 Best Restaurants list in its first year.

The kitchen team here spends part of each year traveling Morocco to unearth courtly and regional home recipes, then brings French technique to bear on what they find. The result is Moroccan fine dining that goes well past tagine and couscous, landing on dishes the country's culinary history almost forgot. It sits inside the Royal Mansour, so the room is suitably spectacular. It appears on MENA's 50 Best Restaurants list.

Cerulean blue walls and sunny yellow accents set the tone for this French bistro with serious culinary ambitions, tucked into a Marrakesh side street. The chef works with local, seasonal Moroccan produce and folds it into a menu that reads Parisian but tastes of somewhere specific. A terrace, a wine cellar running past 300 bottles, and a set lunch that draws a crowd who know to come back, it landed at number 21 on MENA's 50 Best Restaurants list.

Fifty acres of ancient olive trees and more than a hundred thousand roses frame this Forbes Five Star resort on the edge of Marrakech, with the Atlas Mountains filling in the background. Private villas draw on Berber and Andalusian-Arabic architecture, each with its own walled garden and plunge pool, all in a desert palette that manages to feel genuinely calm rather than designed-within-an-inch-of-its-life.

Massimiliano Alajmo's Italian fine dining room sits inside the Royal Mansour, where the patio catches the kind of Marrakech sunset that makes Venetian cooking feel entirely reasonable this far from Venice. The kitchen uses local ingredients alongside imported Italian staples, pulling both into something that lands on the 50 Best MENA list at number 24. Dress for the room, not the medina outside.

An open kitchen anchors a stripped-back Art Deco space in Guéliz, where the menu changes whenever the permaculture farm on the city's outskirts decides it's ready. Farmers is a vegetable-forward restaurant that partners with a single organic farm, Sanctuary Slimane, and lets that relationship dictate the whole program. The chef uses fermentation, preserving, and slow roasting to do the heavy lifting. It holds a spot on MENA's 50 Best Restaurants list.

The name is Australia's country code, which tells you where the team's head is, even if the room is in Marrakech's Gueliz neighborhood. Moss green banquettes and blush marble make it feel bright at lunch and candlelit at dinner, and the menu runs the same casual line: steak sandwiches, pickled sardines, a Lamington for dessert. It landed on MENA's 50 Best Restaurants list, and the room on any given night looks like half of Marrakech already knows each other.

The marble-columned entrance is the kind that makes you half-expect Bogart to materialize from the lobby shadows. This luxury hotel, the second outpost of the Royal Mansour brand, occupies a refurbished mid-century property downtown and leans into its old-Hollywood grandeur without getting stuck there. A well-stocked bar is rarer in Casablanca than the decor suggests, and the spa and global restaurants keep the international crowd moving. Forbes Four Star.

Rose-pink pavilions rise among date palms just outside Marrakech, the whole compound modeled loosely on a sultan's palace, with Moorish archways, mosaic floors, and lanterns that earn their keep at dusk. Amanjena is a small luxury resort, 32 suites and pavilions, each arranged around its own private courtyard. On site there's a spa, tennis, golf, a Moroccan restaurant, and an izakaya with a robata grill, which is either an odd pairing or a very confident one.

Forty acres of bougainvillea, palm, and olive trees surround the pink pavilions of this Forbes Four Star resort, kept low so the Atlas Mountains stay visible on the horizon. The spa runs two separate pavilions and leans hard into Moroccan ingredients: saffron, argan oil, rhassoul clay. The kind of place where you plan to explore Marrakech and spend three days by the pool instead.

Olive trees line the drive and the ochre buildings seem to rise straight out of the Atlas foothills, which sets the tone before you've even checked in. This Forbes Four Star resort in the Al Maaden district keeps 130 rooms and suites, most with private terraces facing either the mountains or the gardens. Zellige tilework, hand-carved plaster, and bronze lanterns do the decorating. Three pools, a golf course next door, and a spa rooted in Moroccan ritual fill the days.

A clifftop hotel built inside a former royal palace, with the Atlantic running right up to the base of the bluff. The name translates to castle of the sea, which sets expectations appropriately. Arched courtyards, carved wood, Berber rugs, and many rooms with open-ocean views make the bones hard to argue with. The Forbes Four Star property also has a spa leaning on traditional hammam rituals and argan treatments, which feels right given the address.

Twenty minutes from the medina's organized chaos, this Forbes Four Star resort trades narrow alleys for clean lines, manicured gardens, and what is reportedly the largest pool in Morocco. The riad-style spa runs through hammams, rhassoul clay wraps, and argan oil massages with quiet ceremony. The 18-hole golf course and collection of private villas mean guests rarely need to leave, which is either a selling point or a cautionary tale, depending on why you came.

Twelve rooms perched between the Atlantic and a lagoon, with oyster beds close enough that the seafood menu practically writes itself. This intimate Forbes Four Star hotel on Morocco's little-visited Atlantic coast earns its "Montauk of Morocco" nickname, though the comparison undersells the Moroccan craftsmanship threaded through every corner. The infinity pool is the main office for most guests, watersports and spa treatments filling whatever gaps remain.

A 28-room riad tucked inside the Kasbah, close enough to the Saadian Tombs that you can hear the tour groups pass and then close the door on them. Courtyards shaded by orange trees, a pool for mint tea or actual swimming, a spa, and a handful of rooms that lean hard into ornate Moroccan detailing. The souks are steps away whenever you want them, and very much not your problem when you don't.

Set inside a 440-acre forest on what was once a royal estate, this Ritz-Carlton is the kind of hotel where the ceiling alone, carved cedarwood and muqarnas rippling overhead, takes a moment to process. Zellij tilework lines the interiors, rooms look out over olive groves or a championship golf course, and the spa runs on hammam rituals and argan oil. It holds a Forbes Four Star rating.

Arabian horses roam 15 acres at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, which tells you most of what you need to know about the mood here. Selman Marrakech is a luxury resort where the owners' equestrian obsession shapes everything, from stable visits and dressage lessons to stallions performing during Sunday brunch. The Chenot spa, the pool, and the design are all suitably dazzling, but it's the horses that give the place its personality.

Richard Branson's mother spotted this estate while her son was off planning a balloon expedition, which tells you everything about the kind of people who end up here. A luxury hotel at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, about forty-five minutes from Marrakech, it holds an antiques dealer's old collection inside traditional Moorish walls, a deep-blue reflecting pool in the courtyard, and ten Berber tent suites with Jacuzzis for the glampers among us. The Michelin Guide awarded it 3 Keys.

A heavy carved wooden door on rue Sidi Mimoun opens into two early-20th-century residences built around a pair of courtyards, one with a long heated pool, the other with a fountain and scattered sofas. This Relais & Châteaux holds a Michelin Key. Rooms lean into ornate plasterwork and carved wood; suites claim private terraces over the courtyard. The rooftop plunge pool has the Atlas Mountains as a backdrop, which feels almost unfair.

Thousands of seashells cover the lobby walls of this grand seaside resort on what Moroccans call their Riviera, and that's before you get to the zellige tile, marble mosaics, and hand-carved wood brought together by artisans working in traditional craft. Suites come with four-poster beds and private terraces; beachfront villas add their own pools and dedicated butlers. The spa and the dining rooms, run by a roster of European chefs, give guests reasons not to leave.

Perched on a clifftop above the Atlantic, this Forbes Four Star hotel is Conrad's Morocco debut, and it arrives with a red carpet down the drive and a marble lobby where geometric tilework meets clean contemporary lines. Open-air walkways let the ocean breeze do most of the decorating. There's a spa, a pool terrace, and a seafood restaurant looking out to sea, which means the view is doing serious work whether you're in or out of the water.

The design lifts from the Medersa Ben Youssef, a revered piece of Moroccan Islamic architecture, and the effect across 28 acres of gardens and orchards is suitably monumental. This is a grand resort hotel well outside the medina, so expect Atlas mountain views, enormous suites that some villas stretch into riad territory, an Ayurvedic spa, and three restaurants ranging from fine-dining Indian to poolside plates. A free shuttle runs to the center when the grounds stop being enough.

A boutique hotel tucked into a natural park near the fishing port of Larache, about an hour from Tangier, La Fiermontina Ocean sits on a hillside above the Atlantic with the kind of remoteness that feels chosen rather than accidental. Stone buildings drift into a working village; guests sleep in vaulted, rug-warmed ancestral houses or in sleeker pool suites with floor-to-ceiling windows. A hammam, a beach club below, and a Michelin two-key distinction round it out.

White-washed riad architecture sits right on the Moroccan shoreline at Tamuda Bay, where the St. Regis has planted its flag on a stretch of turquoise water most travelers haven't added to their itineraries yet. The resort runs 100 rooms and suites with modern comforts and Moroccan detailing, a spa, and several restaurants. The barefoot-luxury pitch is genuine here, where the bay does most of the heavy lifting.

Floor-to-ceiling windows in the sea-facing rooms frame the Atlantic like the hotel commissioned it. This is a full Four Seasons property on the Corniche, so luxury is the baseline: 157 rooms stocked with everything you'd expect, a pool that reads as a genuine retreat, and a handful of restaurants covering upscale pan-Mediterranean and Moroccan-leaning Middle Eastern territory. The design channels Morocco through a contemporary lens rather than the riad playbook, which divides opinion neatly.

The shungiku, daikon, and mizuna on the menu come from the team's own nearby organic farm, which tells you what kind of operation this is before you've tasted a thing. It's a Japanese restaurant in Gauthier where you can eat à la carte or surrender to the omakase, and the open kitchen makes the discipline of the whole project visible. Casablanca's Japanese dining scene has a new reference point.

Marble floors, crystal chandeliers, and velvet banquettes put this formal restaurant inside the Royal Mansour squarely in the "dress for it" category. Celebrity chef Éric Frechon drives the menu toward French technique with Moroccan sourcing, the Oualidia oysters being the clearest argument for that arrangement. The room reads more Paris grand brasserie than North Africa, which is either a feature or a bug depending on what you came to Casablanca for.

A family villa in Casablanca's Gauthier quarter, dressed in brocante-chic, mid-century finds and run by two sisters who taught themselves to cook. The French-leaning kitchen punches well above what the cozy dining room suggests, which is part of the charm. Locals who know the neighborhood's eating options tend to know this address; they just don't always share it. A Discovery selection from The 50.

The menu at this fine dining restaurant in Fez's Medina is written fresh each morning, shaped by whatever the market offered that day. Chef Najat Kaanache, who trained at El Bulli and Noma, runs a long tasting experience through ten courses that pull seafood, meat, and vegetables into conversation with pomegranate, raw cacao, and citrus. It has earned a 50 Discovery from The World's 50 Best.

An eight-room boutique hotel a short walk from the Majorelle Gardens, Maison Brummell Majorelle rises behind terrazzo walls like a modernist sandcastle. Inside, smooth stone floors, tadelakt walls, and a staircase that looks carved from solid rock keep things sculptural and quiet. Rooms open onto either a private deck or a garden with an outdoor tub. The hammam has an indoor plunge pool, and nightcaps come from an honesty bar beside a fireplace. It holds a Michelin Key.

Seven interconnected riads behind an unmarked door in the medina, with 14 rooms that each read like a different artist's fever dream. Izza leans into the era when Marrakech was the world's most glamorous escape hatch, and the tilework, sculpted plaster, and art collection suggest no one has quite let go of that idea. There's a spa, a plunge pool, and a rooftop bar. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Four suites in a traditional medina courtyard mansion, owned by Milanese who packed their taste and left the kitsch at home. Riad Due holds a Michelin Key, and the design earns the attention. The logic of a riad is that the city stays outside, reduced to the call to prayer and a rooftop glimpse, while everything within the walls stays quiet and stylish. The souk is a short walk; the kitchen will cook for you privately if you'd rather not leave.

A riad hotel in the Marrakech medina that looks, improbably, like a Copenhagen loft had a love affair with a Moroccan courtyard. The color palette runs to cool neutrals and warm wood, which makes the carved plasterwork pop rather than disappear into the usual sensory pile-up. Eight rooms, adults only, two pools, and dinners served family-style at a communal table with a menu that runs Nordic technique through Moroccan ingredients. Holds a Michelin Key.

A copper freestanding bathtub beside a bedside fireplace in the Master Suite tells you immediately that Riad Sakkan is not your typical medina guesthouse. Twelve rooms in a traditional inward-facing courtyard house, but the palette and the art are sharply contemporary, reflecting Mouassine's place as Marrakech's most fashionable quarter. The rooftop runs from breakfast through sunset cocktails. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Victorian freestanding bathtubs in a medina courtyard mansion is the pitch, and Riad Tarabel delivers it without a single piece of brass camel kitsch in sight. This riad hotel earns a Michelin Key for a reason: Second Empire furniture, a courtyard pool, a spa, and dinner served wherever you happen to feel like sitting. It runs closer to a very grand private house than a conventional hotel, which is exactly the point.

A riad in one of the oldest quarters of the medina, Dar Al Dall translates to "House of Shadows," which turns out to be a design brief as much as a name. Five suites sit around a courtyard where hand-chiseled tilework and carved plaster archways do the decorating. There's a hammam, a rooftop, and an open kitchen where couscous gets made the slow way. The whole thing holds a Michelin Key and leans hard into the no-phone, be-present premise.

A 25-suite palace hotel in the Palmeraie, Marrakech's palm-grove district, where your airport transfer arrives in a London black cab because of course it does. Suites are called Harims, meaning a palace apartment, and they're furnished with the spare confidence of rooms that don't need to try hard. A floodlit pool, a billiards room, a cigar selection, spa treatments in a vaulted cellar. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Out in the Palmeraie, the palm grove where Marrakech goes to breathe, Palais Ronsard is an expansive colonial-style resort that wraps around multiple pools and gardens as if it has nowhere to be. The interiors lean into the grand period style without apology. A hammam spa, two restaurants, a cocktail bar, and a pool house keep you from having to venture anywhere, which in the Marrakech heat is a design feature. It holds a Michelin Key.

Seven suites in a former harem-palace, each opening onto a private terrace, is a decent argument for staying in the Andalous Quarter. This Michelin Key riad sits far enough from the medina's tourist drag that you can actually hear yourself think, which is easier when you're reclining among silk brocade and hand-painted calligraphy. The hammam, the French-Fassi restaurant, and a courtyard threaded with tiny water channels are all waiting when the room finally lets you go.

The courtyard fountain and citrus grove do the work that air conditioning tries and fails to do in the medina's sweltering alleys. This riad hotel in Fes el Bali holds thirteen rooms, each threaded with terra-cotta tile mosaics, keyhole doorways, and calligraphic plasterwork without ever tipping into fuss. An on-site hammam, a heated pool, and a rooftop with a full sweep of the ancient city round things out. It holds a Michelin Key.

A Moroccan architect owns this 26-room riad hotel in the Fes medina, and the interiors show it: the proportions feel considered rather than cobbled together by someone who fell in love with the country on holiday. The restaurant runs across three dining rooms, the hammam is on-site, and a shuttle runs to the Royal Golf Club. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

Five rooms, one massive marble bathtub in each, and a rooftop terrace looking out over medina minarets and the Atlantic beyond. Dar Maya is a riad in Essaouira's whitewashed medina, and where most riads drown you in silk and throw pillows, this one takes the opposite view: pared-down rooms, warm lighting, and the kind of unhurried hospitality that starts with pastries at check-in and doesn't really let up. It holds a Michelin Key.

A riad hotel in Essaouira's old medina, L'Heure Bleue Palais has a colonial bar, a billiards room, and a rooftop pool overlooking the ramparts, which tells you something about the pace of life here. Four suite styles run African to Portuguese to Oriental, each landing on king beds and oversized tubs. A Moroccan breakfast arrives in the flowering courtyard. Essaouira is the town Marrakech dreams of becoming when it finally gets some sleep. One Michelin Key.

A ksar, the North African castle form, earthen walls enclosing gardens of palm and bougainvillea, is what greets you at this boutique hotel outside Essaouira, which holds a Michelin Key. Two pools, two restaurants, and a hammam fill the compound, and the adult side of each is pointedly kept separate from the under-twelve contingent. Terracotta tile floors, Berber rugs, and argan-oil products in the showers; no televisions unless you ask.

Sitting at 1,650 meters in the Middle Atlas, Michlifen Resort is a mountain lodge where Moroccan carved wood meets Alpine timber and roaring fires, which is either a design contradiction or a very clever one. Ifrane gets called "Little Switzerland," and the resort leans into that with a 3,500-square-meter spa, a golf course overlooking forested slopes, and suites with roll-top baths. It holds a Michelin Key.

The rooftop wraps a full circle around the building, so the Atlas mountains meet Marrakech's rooftops in every direction at once. This is a luxury hotel in the Hivernage district, 71 suites deep, with interiors that blend the Nobu brand's forward-leaning style into something warmer and more North African than you might expect. The Pearl spa sits underground, the Nobu restaurant anchors the ground floor, and the social spaces quietly outshine the rooms.

A 14-room riad in the medina's tangle of alleys near Bab Doukkala, with one of the higher rooftop terraces in the city and a full 360-degree sweep of rooftops and Atlas peaks. Breakfast arrives wherever you'd like to sit. Two restaurants draw their own crowd: La Table du Riad and Naama, a Mediterranean room. The Michelin Guide has it on their selected hotels list, which given the competition in Marrakech, says something.

Sofitel's sprawling five-floor complex sits in the Hivernage, the sensible middle ground between the medina's chaos and the far-flung Palmeraie resorts. Nearly 350 rooms means this is no riad, but the low-rise layout keeps it from feeling like a convention hotel, and the spa is genuinely large enough to make the city feel very far away. The Paris-meets-Morocco interiors do their job without apology.

Six rooms, three terraces, and a hammam tucked into the Bab Doukkala medina, this intimate riad sits inside a house that feels like it has always been here. The Italian owners renovated with a light touch, and the restraint shows: no maximalist riad theater, just cool tiles, good proportions, and a pool terrace that earns a long afternoon. The cooking stays Moroccan, the hammam stays traditional, and the quiet is conspicuous.

Five rooms, white on white, tucked down a medina alley in Marrakech: Dar Seven is a riad hotel stripped of the usual riot of color, its Italian owners apparently preferring calm to kaleidoscope. The open courtyard and carved arches are still very much Moroccan, but the palette reads more like a boutique hotel in Milan. The rooftop terrace handles breakfast and sunset drinks, and the staff will put together a Moroccan dinner if you ask early enough.

Six suites dressed in white, with enough ornate tilework and hand-carved detail to keep you staring at the ceiling well past checkout. L'Hôtel Marrakech is a riad hotel in the medina, redesigned by Jasper Conran with the kind of taste that looks effortless and costs the opposite. The courtyard, pool, and terrace arrange themselves so conveniently around doing nothing that the souks outside feel like a choice rather than an obligation.

Finding Riad 144 is its own small adventure, through a warren of alleys north of the souk in the Sidi Ben Slimane district until you hit a heavy front door. Inside, the contrast with the medina's chaos is the whole point, and the design commits harder than most riads dare, running from dark and moody to bright and airy across eight rooms. The courtyard, the hammam, the rooftop at sunset, and the traditional Moroccan meals are all present and correct.

A six-room riad in the old medina where the courtyard does what Moroccan courtyards are supposed to do: blue zellige pool, orange tree overhead, daybeds arranged for serious idling. The owners are Moroccan and Australian, and the rooms mix arched cedar doors and tadelakt walls with Florence Broadhurst textiles, which sounds unlikely and looks good. Mint tea masterclasses and storytelling soirées are on offer, and the rooftop bar pours sunset mocktails with full commitment to the ritual.

Several restored houses stitched together by an architect who clearly had a long-standing obsession with Marrakech, Riad Dar Saad is a boutique riad hotel tucked into the Dar El Bacha district. Rooms and suites are arranged around courtyards with dipping pools and hand-cut tilework. The hammam, Les Bains de Ninon, runs traditional treatments with natural products. Curated local art turns up in alcoves where you least expect it.

Seven rooms in the Dar el Bacha quarter, steps from Ben Youssef Mosque, and quiet enough to feel like a private house someone forgot to tell you about. This riad hotel has a spa, in-house dining, and an elevator, which sounds minor until you've hauled luggage up a traditional Marrakech staircase. A driver meets you at the airport, so you never have to negotiate the medina's labyrinth on arrival. The Michelin Guide has selected it among its hotels.

Five rooms, all different, in a riad the owner actually lived in before opening it to guests, which explains why it feels less like a boutique hotel and more like borrowing a very stylish friend's house. The Italian heritage shows in the contemporary furnishings, but the Moroccan bones, the courtyard plunge pool, and the rooftop terrace with its medina views keep the whole thing grounded in exactly the kind of seclusion you came to Marrakech for.

Canopy beds dramatic enough to warrant their own sightlines anchor the suites at this classic Medina riad, where carved wood and patterned textiles do the decorating and a hammam does the recovering. The rooftop looks out over the old city toward the Atlas Mountains, which makes evening tea feel less like a ritual and more like a reasonable excuse to stay up. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

Eight rooms tucked inside a traditional riad in the Mouassine medina, with a rooftop that pulls double duty as spa and restaurant. The architecture leans into light and open space rather than the shadowy warren you might expect, which sounds like a small thing until you've spent a day in the souks. Part of a two-property Laz family; this one is the slightly larger sibling, though "larger" remains a relative term in a city where intimacy is the whole point.

Two interconnected houses tucked into one of the Medina's quieter corners, Ryad Dyor is a ten-room boutique riad you reach entirely on foot, which filters out exactly the right guests. The courtyard plunge pool, rooftop terrace, and small hammam do most of the persuading. Rooms mix Moroccan antiques with pieces from Europe and further east, landing somewhere between collector's den and guesthouse. Meals can be arranged in advance, so leaving is optional.

Heavy wooden doors open onto a courtyard tiled in ultramarine, with a reflecting pool and brass lanterns that glow at dusk. This intimate boutique hotel sits on a quiet medina street, its rooms each individually furnished, with original wood-beamed ceilings and ornamental mirrors. Mornings mean lavish Moroccan breakfasts poolside; afternoons bring mint tea. The rooftop terrace is where you watch the sunset turn the old city improbably pink.

The carved doors alone take a moment to get past, and that sets the tone for this riad in the medina. Suites lean hard into velvet and fine woodwork, the hammam is small and cozy, and the roof terrace has a plunge pool for surviving the afternoon heat. The cook runs both traditional meals and cooking lessons. Not for anyone who finds maximalism exhausting, but then those people probably shouldn't be in Marrakech.

A riad a few minutes' walk from Jemaa el-Fna, Dar Mo'Da keeps things intimate with five suites, two pools, and a rooftop that makes the whole medina look like a film set. The courtyard, carved arcades, and salon alcoves pile on the atmosphere without tipping into theme-park territory. A marble hammam and massage room round it out for anyone who needs an excuse to stay inside all day.

Rooms with views of the Hassan II mosque on one side and the Atlantic on the other make it hard to decide where to face your chair. This is a full-service luxury hotel sitting steps from the old medina and surrounded by colonial Art Deco, both of which quietly inform the interiors. The spa leans into traditional Moroccan tilework and craft, while the restaurants swing between French brasserie and Casablancan classics.

Ancient palms and citrus trees fill the courtyard of this boutique hotel in the Kasbah district, where hammocks are strung between trees and the mood is closer to a private villa than a riad on the tourist circuit. Adobe walls, carved woodwork, and shaded patios set the tone, while some rooms add solariums or fireplaces. The Saadian Tombs are practically next door, which is either very convenient or a reminder that history never really clocks out.

Seven suites behind a carved wooden door near the Bahia Palace make Riad Antara feel less like a hotel and more like borrowing a very well-connected friend's Marrakech house. Zellige tilework, Moroccan textiles, and a traditional hammam set the tone, while the rooftop trades the medina's noise for bougainvillea and birdsong. The owners press babouche slippers on arrival and serve breakfast up in the sun.

A riad tucked just off the lanes of Mouassine, with desert-toned walls, poured terrazzo, and sculpted brass that make the medina's chaos feel very far away. Each room is individually shaped, furnished with hand-finished pieces by Moroccan artisans and vintage rugs sourced from Bab El Khemis. The rooftop plunge pool comes edged with ochre daybeds. A leafy courtyard and an honesty bar keep the whole place mercifully low-key.

Two plunge pools and a rooftop hammam tucked into a residential medina lane say a lot about what Riad Camilia is trying to do. This small riad hotel runs just two rooms and four suites, each one mixing Moroccan and Parisian sensibilities in ways that feel considered rather than assembled. The courtyard has the hush of a private house, which is exactly the point. Evening dinner, tailored to whoever is staying, is the kind of thing you book around.

Five rooms in a renovated Medina mansion, each one furnished by Belgian artist Laurence Leenaert, whose lifestyle brand LRNCE supplies the bespoke homewares, hand-carved pieces, and custom terrazzo underfoot. This adults-only riad guesthouse near the Bahia Palace is the kind of place where the stained glass was chosen with genuine intention. A jacaranda tree anchors the courtyard, breakfast lands on the rooftop, and the hammam opens whenever you ask.

Neo-Moorish arches and colorful murals give this Sofitel beach resort a look that goes well beyond the usual minimalist-luxury formula. It sits on the Mediterranean coast near M'Diq, a stretch most visitors skip on their way between Tangier and Ceuta, which means the beach stays quiet. Multiple pools, a full spa, and a cocktail bar cover the bases, while the main restaurant cycles through Moroccan, French, Italian, and Asian cooking in a room almost as vivid as the food.

Storks nest in the palms at this La Palmeraie resort, fifteen minutes from the medina on two hectares of gardens where the city's noise simply fails to arrive. Suites run from rattan and teal-tiled rooms to botanical-mural suites with cream sofas and shaggy rugs. Two pools, a spa, a yoga shala, and two restaurants make it easy to treat Marrakech as a view rather than an obligation. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

Five houses spread across the Palmeraie, each with its own pool and gardens, and the kind of décor that treats Moroccan and broader African craft as something to live with rather than pose next to. This is a resort where the owners, an ethnobotanist and a Senegalese-Parisian designer, built excursions by bike, sidecar, and camelback around respectful cultural access. Dinners move between a communal room and the sprawling gardens depending on the evening's mood.

Seven acres of gardens and groves spread through the Palmeraie, just outside the medina's fray, making Les Deux Tours feel more like a private compound than a hotel. The 44 rooms and suites are split among villas and pavilions done in a style that nods to Marrakech's romantic past without cosplaying it. A hammam, a gastronomic restaurant, a poolside option, and, for some reason, a sushi bar round out the picture.

A modernist building by French architect Christophe Pillet, this luxury hotel on Ain Diab Beach blends Art Deco traces with North African classicism into something Casablanca genuinely needed. Inside, the minimalism stops at the front door: rooms run to rich color, marble, terracotta, plaster, and walls lined with artworks and art books. A Cinq Mondes spa, a rooftop Mediterranean restaurant, and an "urban trattoria" round out a property that makes no apologies for going all in.

Peacocks roam freely among the olive groves and jasmine here, which sets the tone for this six-suite villa near Marrakech's old city walls. Charles Boccara designed the architecture, and Bill Willis furnished it, a pairing whose social world once included Yves Saint Laurent. Carved cedar, emerald zellige fireplaces, and a heated pool in the gardens keep things from feeling like a museum, though the black-and-white photo albums left on the tables do lean that way.

Less than an hour from Marrakech, Caravan by Habitas Agafay drops you into the rocky Agafay Desert with the Atlas Mountains sitting on the horizon. The 20 tented lodges borrow from Berber design and run on solar power, though the beds and stone terraces signal that roughing it isn't really the point. Pools, a spa, a yoga pavilion, and camel rides fill the days, with Moroccan cooking at the open-air restaurant to finish them.

At the foot of the Atlas Mountains, about twenty minutes outside Marrakech, this small eco-resort runs hard against the assumption that Morocco is all terracotta and dust. Fourteen rooms and suites open onto either garden terraces or mountain views, and the whole place is quiet in a way the medina never will be. There's a spa, a hammam, poolside lunch, and dinners that lean deep into Moroccan flavors.

Eighteen plush safari-style tents arranged around a pool in the Agafay desert, close enough to Marrakech for a day trip but far enough to feel like the exact middle of nowhere. Each tent has a king bed, a living room, a hot shower, and a wood-burning stove for cold desert nights, all decorated with Berber touches and a sharp contemporary eye. Horseback rides, mountain biking, and a nearby lake fill the days when the pool loses its appeal.

Geometric entryway drama gives way to rolling Atlas foothills in every direction at this sixteen-room countryside retreat just south of Marrakech. The team calls it a "peasant palace," and the name earns its irony: every room has its own outdoor space, the restaurant terrace overlooks open hills, and the pool just reflects sky. The décor leans rustic but skips the usual riad signifiers in favor of vivid textiles and what can only be called scruffy-chic lamps.

A keyhole-shaped door in a coral facade opens onto a Indo-Moorish villa about eighteen kilometers outside Marrakech, where terracotta passageways connect firelit lounges, mosaic dining rooms, and open courtyards before spilling into gardens around an olive-tree-framed pool. Nine rooms and suites are decorated with carved doors, ornamental lanterns, and green marble soaking tubs. The place rents as a whole villa, too, if you have that kind of friends-trip ambition.

A luxury desert camp on the rocky Agafay plateau, about an hour from Marrakech's medina chaos, where each private tent comes with a freestanding soaking tub positioned to face the open desert. The infinity pool looks out toward the Atlas Mountains, evenings run to Moroccan dinners with live music under a sky with almost no light pollution, and the name is not incidental: this is a place people come to stargaze in earnest.

An eighteen-room riad hotel in a restored palace, Palais Amani is the quiet argument for choosing Fes over Marrakech. The renovation was near-archaeological in its care, and it shows in the carved woodwork, handmade tiles, and textiles that make each room different without being precious about it. The rooftop bar handles sundowners, a hammam handles everything else, and the medina is a short walk away when you're ready to disappear into it.

A riad-hotel scaled up to palace proportions, Palais Faraj sits on a hillside above the medina with 25 rooms that lean hard into Moroccan tilework, carved plaster, and the kind of courtyard geometry you'll spend an afternoon photographing. The Essencia Spa runs a proper hammam alongside more contemporary treatments, and the rooftop restaurant looks out over the old city. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

A riad hotel tucked deep in the ancient medina of Fes, where hand-cut tilework covers every surface and the ceilings climb high enough to make you forget the labyrinthine streets outside. Guest suites are dressed in warm, saturated color with sitting areas built for long afternoons and mint tea. A courtyard pool anchors the social life, a hammam and spa are on hand, and two in-house restaurants turn out slow-cooked tagines from glazed earthenware.

A 19th-century palace in the old medina, reworked by an owner whose loyalties are split between Morocco and Mayfair, which explains the Arabic-Moorish archways coexisting peacefully with Art Deco flourishes. A black marble pool anchors the courtyard, and the spa goes deep: hammam, Jacuzzi, facials, massages. There's also a library, a kids' room, cooking classes, and a team happy to arrange tours of Fez when the riad's pull eventually loosens.

Perched on a hill between the medina and Fes's modern quarter, Hotel Sahrai is a boutique hotel built on a simple premise: go see the ancient city, then come back to an infinity pool and a rooftop bar where the view of the medina at sunset does most of the talking. Fifty rooms run to minimalist pale brick and floor-to-ceiling windows, with a Givenchy Spa, two restaurants, and just enough hand-painted pottery to remind you which country you're in.

Low adobe buildings dissolve into the palm oasis at the edge of the Sahara, where M'Hamid has sheltered desert travelers for centuries. This luxury desert hotel runs from rooms styled after Berber tents, spare and cool, up to palatial suites with Zellige mosaics and custom Moroccan craftsmanship. A pool and a hammam handle the afternoons. The Michelin Guide has it in their selected hotels list.

Keyhole archways and artisan glass lanterns thread Moorish craft through what is otherwise a contemporary Fairmont-scale hotel on the Bouregreg River, part of a marina complex just outside the old medina. The rooftop pool and panoramic sunset bar stay open late, the spa is among the city's more serious ones, and the black-and-white guest rooms keep things crisp, with many balconies facing the water.

The sandy-colored low-rise buildings circle a lagoon pool with the Atlantic just beyond, which makes it easy to forget you're at a Fairmont and feel like you've stumbled onto something more personal. This is a full-scale beach resort outside Taghazout, a fishing village an hour from Agadir, with rooms starting at a generous fifty square meters, a spa, a surf club, golf nearby, and a Morimoto outpost for when surfing works up an expensive appetite.

A boutique hotel inside a converted Catholic church, right against the ramparts of El Jadida's old Portuguese city. Fourteen rooms split between the original convent and a former American consulate annex, each furnished with antiques sourced from markets across Morocco. Blue and white tile and chandeliers meet carved lattices and stucco in a way that somehow doesn't feel forced. Mint tea in the old nave, ocean views at the café downstairs.

The roof deck, with Atlantic water stretching out past Essaouira's ramparts, is where the day tends to dissolve. This boutique hotel in the medina skips the traditional courtyard in favor of a more cosmopolitan layout: tadelakt walls and hand-cut tile alongside clean, minimal lines that feel more Milan than Morocco. The After Five bistro handles dinner downstairs, and cooking workshops are on offer for guests who can be pulled away from the view.

Agadir sits where the Atlas Mountains, the Sahara, and the Atlantic all run out of road, and this beachfront Sofitel leans hard into that geography. It's a self-contained luxury resort with a serious thalassotherapy and spa program, rooms that trend toward the lavish end of the dial, and restaurants that run Moroccan and Mediterranean flavors through a French filter. The kind of place you don't leave much, which is quietly the point.

The orange grove and driving range are clues that this is not a standard capital-city business hotel. The Sofitel Jardin des Roses is a full luxury resort sitting in the heart of Rabat's historic district, close to the Royal Palace, with an Andalusian garden and a pool to go with the carved headboards and mashrabiya screens. Sofitel's Parisian-inflected style keeps things contemporary underneath the North African ornament, for visitors who've noticed Morocco has a capital.